Financial gains over the last decade in the United States have been mostly made at the "tippy-top" of the economic food chain as more people fall out of the middle class. The top 20 percent of Americans now holds 84 percent of U.S. wealth, as Paul Solman found out as part of a Making Sen$e series on economic inequality.

PBS correspondent Paul Solman went to the line outside the Letterman show in NYC and showed people three different pie charts representing the possible distribution of wealth in three different countries. Most people figured the most equal of those was the US. It wasn’t. The US was the most unequal: the top 20% own 84% of the wealth in America, and the bottom 40% have only 0.3%.